People | Intelligent Systems Lab

Director

Dr. Qing (Cindy) Chang

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering at University of Michigan

M.S. University of Wisconsin - Madison

Professor Chang joined UVA as an Associate Professor in December 2018. Prior to her position at UVA, Dr. Chang was an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University. Dr. Qing (Cindy) Chang’s research has focused on improving sustainability and efficiency of smart manufacturing systems. Her research interests include dynamic manufacturing system modeling and simulation, cyber physical systems, data-driven analysis, real-time production control, human robot collaboration in manufacturing systems, and intelligent maintenance. Dr. Chang received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and three General Motors Boss Kettering Awards.

Graduate Student

Tian Yu

Email: [email protected]

Tian Yu Joined Intelligent Systems Lab in 2018. Before that, he obtained his B.S. degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 2016, and his M.S. degree from Brown University in 2018, both in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include production system control, human-robot collaboration in manufacturing setting and reinforcement learning etc.

Cheng Zhu

Email: [email protected]

Cheng Zhu joined Intelligent Systems Lab in 2018. He obtained his B.S. degree from University of Science & Technology of China in June 2014, and his M.S. degree from California State University, Northridge in July 2017, both in Electrical Engineering. He has been conducting researches on product quality analysis, human robot collaboration, robot safety etc.

Chen Li

Email: [email protected]

Chen received bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Miami University in 2018, and master's degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from University of Virginia in 2020. She is now a PhD student in mechanical engineering starting from 2020. Her research projects include modeling and control of production systems, as well as applications of deep learning and reinforcement learning in smart manufacturing systems. She has a cute dog named after Nikola Tesla, the greatest inventor of all time.

Kshitij 'Horizon' Bhatta

Email: [email protected]

Kshitij completed his BSME degree from University of New Mexico (UNM) in 2020 where he was the EV powertrain lead for the LoboMotorsports 2020 Formula SAE team. He then worked as a research assistant at the Chaos Lab in UNM from spring 2020 to fall 2021 where he worked on analysis and control of complex networks. He joined the Intelligent Systems Lab at the University of Virginia in Fall 2021. His research interests include production system modeling (State Space and Markov Decision Process) and control (Classical Control and Reinforcement learning methods), human-robot collaboration in manufacturing and Analysis of complex networks.

Muhammad Waseem

Email: [email protected]

Muhammad completed his BS Industrial Engineering and MS Manufacturing Systems Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan. He worked as Lab Engineer at College of Aeronautical Engineering, Pakistan Airforce Academy and later on joined Manufacturing Lab at University of Engineering and Technology. He joined intelligent system lab in January 2022. His research work includes modelling and control of Robot-assisted multiproduct flexible production lines.

Mehregan Gilani Nejad

Email: [email protected]

Mehregan earned her bachelor's from the University of Tehran in Mechanical Engineering in 2021. In August 2022, she joined the Intelligent Systems Lab. Her research now includes human-robot interaction and learning from demonstration with the help of reinforcement learning.